We Are All Made of Stars Read Online Free

that’s the promise we make on the night watch. Although we can’t come with you, you will never be alone when you take that final step.
    And I always work the night shift. I asked if I could when I was offered the job. After some hesitation they let me, as long as I take enough days off in between, because no board ever wants their nurses only to work the difficult night-shift slots, even someone as experienced as me. No one ever asks me why I only do the night shift – because it’s not like I have childcare to worry about. But, anyway, I only half understand the reason myself. I think it was a gradual thing. I think so, although it may have happened all at once. In the months since Vincent left the army, it’s been hard to get a clear sense of anything very much, except that somehow the strands of our lives that were so closely woven together began unravelling into two separate threads – quickly enough for it to feel like I have no control over it. Perhaps taking the night shifts has been about holding up a white flag and declaring surrender, because if our house is the battlefield, then it’s easier, less painful, less dangerous, if only one of us is in it at a time. It’s my house during the day, and at night it belongs to Vincent.
    Thea hesitates still, and I sense there is something she wants to ask me.
    â€˜How’s Vincent doing?’ she asks, and Shadow, suddenly tired of my affection, leaps onto the desk and nudges her hand up from where it is resting and onto his head. He has trained us all very well.
    â€˜Great.’ I smile, nodding. ‘He’s doing really great. Never still since he got the new prosthetic fitted. State of the art it is, apparently. He got back from the sponsored bicycle ride last week, and he’s already talking about training for the Marathon … He’s doing great. He’s barely ever still.’
    â€˜OK, good.’ She stands there for a moment, and takes a breath. ‘So you’re writing a letter for Maggie?’
    I nod.
    I began it one night for a patient who could no longer hold a pen, and who wanted to make sure her husband would know how to work the washing machine after she’d gone. That’s when the letter writing started, and it grew from there – each letter another story, another life, another legacy. Not every patient wants to put their final thoughts on paper, not every patient has to, but there is something comforting about leaving a physical relic of your mind in this world, something reassuring.
    â€˜Do they ask you, just before, you know … Is it like they know? They know it’s time for a letter?’
    And suddenly I know what it is that is terrifying her, what it is that she can’t quite bring herself to articulate.
    â€˜Issy hasn’t asked me to write a letter,’ I say.
    â€˜Well.’ She nods, dropping her gaze from mine as she holds up her empty mug. ‘OK, I’d better get back to her.’
    It seems like Shadow agrees: he drops down from the high desk with easy grace and trots off towards Issy’s room, his tail high and purposeful.
    â€˜I’ll be in soon,’ I reassure Thea, with a smile. And I watch her go back to Issy’s room, thoughts of a cup of tea forgotten as she quietly shuts the door behind her.
    I take my pad of plain writing paper out of the desk drawer, and root around in my bag for my favourite pen: blue ink, ballpoint, smooth flow, looks like it could be a fountain pen, but doesn’t smudge. I love the feel of it, gliding over the slight texture of the paper, filling it with swirls and loops that always, no matter what words they go towards forming, mean so much more than simply what they say.

Dear Franco,
    I don’t suppose you remember me. Why would you? It’s sixty years since we met, and we didn’t know each other for long. I have no idea if you still live in Monte Bernardi or if you are even still alive,